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<title>Familiarity in the flesh by Taggsvansen</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27334552">Familiarity in the flesh</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taggsvansen/pseuds/Taggsvansen'>Taggsvansen</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gender Dysphoria, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Quite a wild ride, Self-Harm, Short Story, emotional distress, fantasy elements I guess but that's not really the point</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 23:40:13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,113</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27334552</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taggsvansen/pseuds/Taggsvansen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When your body becomes occupied by another, when your familliar skin turns wretched and vile and our mind shrivels away in panic, what of ourselves is left then? How do we avoid drowning in the black waters of terror when the self is on the brink of annhihilation?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Familiarity in the flesh</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>My gaze is fixed on the dirty bathroom mirror. I cannot bring myself to look away. My hands, stretched back and contorted, have gone numb and yet I force them to feel, to explore. The skin (my skin?) which just yesterday was scarred and tough has inexplicably turned smooth as a porcelain doll. The eyes seem caught in an everlasting slumber; a peacefulness my panicked mind and pounding pulse is telling me I will never experience again. My heartbeat is deafening as I force my shaking hands farther down. I let my fingers run the length of its nose but when I reach the lips I pause. Will they open? Maybe more importantly, do I want to know what’s behind them? Flashing images of teeth embedded in flesh and gashes of gaping mouths make me want to gag. I attempt to compose myself but how could I ever? There is no preparing for this. I need to know. I pry open the lips and even though my fingers brush against nothing but smooth skin I bend over the sink and retch. When I look back up into the mirror and the face is still there it suddenly dawns on me that this is in fact real. Reality has become a living nightmare. Placed right between my shoulder blades a face protrudes out of my skin. An inanimate parasite, an omen of imminent death. </p><p>I need to focus. My head is spinning. This is not happening. I stand transfixed in front of the mirror, my pulse beating so loud I can’t hear myself breathe. Am I breathing? I lick my teeth to feel something solid, something permanent, but all I feel is the taste of metal coating the inside of my mouth. I want to scream. My skin is crawling. I want to crawl out of it. It’s too constricting, too foreign. I feel trapped, unable to breathe. I want to rip my skin off, a snake molting in spring. All I want to do is rid myself of this parasite that is not a part of me and yet very much a part of me. Am I still me? I’m not me. Then who? If I were strong enough, violent enough, I would peel my skin from my bones and slither away, raw and bloody. But I can’t do that, I’m not that person anymore. I haven’t thought these things for years. What’s happening to me? I grab ahold of the sink, and let the cold porcelain ground me. It does nothing to alleviate my overwhelming claustrophobia. I need to breathe. I wrap my arms around myself and slowly start clawing at my back. I shouldn’t do this. I don’t do this anymore. Red lines streak across my skin from the increasingly frantic path of my nails. In the end I can’t hold back as one of my nails pierces through my skin and the blood smears on my fingers. The stinging pain is the only thing that will give me release.  </p><p>I feel as if I’m drowning. With my head barely above the surface and my attempt at swimming is only barely keeping me afloat. Dozens of new and bloody streaks now mark my back, side by side with the faded white lines snaking across my skin. But I cannot help myself. If I stop swimming I drown. If I stop clawing at myself, I will be swallowed by what I refuse to believe is real. I cannot stop. I find some sort of peace in realizing that maybe this sense of release is my only hope of salvation. Opening myself up and allowing whatever’s left of me to pour out is the only way I will be free again. I let my blood escape this corrupted flesh and drip down to stain the rug. But for how long can I keep going? I will have to stay this way forever I decide, stay here and keep swimming. On and on and on and on and on and on. If I stop, I am trapped within it, within myself. If I stop, I drown. It’s all I need to tell myself to keep going. I haven’t dared to look up in the mirror again. I don’t need to. The image of the face is burned onto my retinas. My back is raw and aching from the pulsing cuts and although I tell my body to keep going, I feel myself growing tired. The fear and clawing have taken their toll. In the end my knees buckle, and I have to sit down on the rug, yet I dare not stop scratching. If I stop, I drown. However, nothing lasts forever and after a while I feel my fingers start to ache, feel them grow stiff, and realize I won’t be able to go on forever. Although my mind is sluggish from exhaustion, this realization pierces through the fog and strikes me with such grief that I cry out in anguish. I am going to drown. I’m going to drown myself! Tears start streaming down my face as I realize his curse has taken everything from me. I have lost my own body; parasitically invaded by a foreign presence. And my family. Oh God, how could I ever face my family again? How could I ever go on living in this body, with this thing? That’s when I hear a voice whispering from the dark crervices of my mind: it would be easier to just drown. You’re just torturing yourself. Stop now and it will all be over. No, no, no, no, no. That’s not who I am anymore. Yet the voice persists until I can no longer stand it. My tired mind doesn’t have the energy to fight back. I break. I close my eyes and gather my thoughts. My tears have stopped, and a hollowness starts to fill me. I feel it first in the pit of my stomach, a familiar void taking the place of my grief and terror. It slowly spreads until my mind is blank and I am consumed by a serene emptiness. Somewhere in the back of my mind another weaker voice is screaming at me, cursing me for accepting my own death, for giving up. I try to tell it there is nothing else to do. I am no longer me. I take a shaky breath and stop swimming. I let my fingers come to a stop, certain this is my last moment on earth. </p><p>When nothing happens, I open my eyes again. My back is aching, and I feel my pulse beating. With each beat of my heart more blood is pouring out of my wounds. My face and eyes are wet, the floor is stained red with blood, but I am very much alive. Was it all a delusion? I didn’t die after all. A spire of hope grows in my chest and I bolt up to look in the mirror. The face still rests on my back. Of course it does. Why couldn’t it have let me die? I don’t want to live my life in this state, in this body. At least not with it as a part of me. I DON’T WANT TO LIVE LIKE THIS! I wanted to drown, be swallowed up by the cold embrace of death but I wasn’t allowed even that final decision over my body. The grief I felt over accepting my own death slowly but surely morphs into frustration. My face is growing hot and I feel a prickling sensation spread over my skin. As I stare at the face in the mirror, rage takes me in its firm hold. It tightens my chest and a furious boot heel of despair and frustration crushes down on the budding hope that has begun to grow in my chest. Grinds it down into mush to mix with the tears and blood on the floor. Why should I be the one who must abandon this body? Why should I not be in control of my own flesh and bones? I feel the bile churning in my stomach and for a moment my rage forces my mind to laser focus. There is only one way out of this. In a flash I grab a razor blade from my cabinet and rest the sharp edge on the face’s upper lip. I could end this now. Slice of this crooked flesh. There is nothing to wait for. All I have to do is cut. Slice. Be done with it. I tell myself all of this and yet my hand is still, the blade still resting on the smooth skin. It should be easy. JUST CUT IT OFF GOD DAMN IT! But I’m frozen. The raging fire that filled me seconds ago has turned to ice in my veins. This feels all too familiar. </p><p>In flashes it comes back to me. A seven-year-old’s determination. The bloody pliers. How I could sit for hours in my room, picking at the unnatural deformities on my back which had appeared out of nowhere. When I at last had stripped my back clean of evidence, all that was left was a large blotch of tough and ugly skin. Of course I couldn’t hide the terrible scar on my back but no one, not even my parents, knew the reasons for how or why it was there. No one except me. Night after night I was tormented by the secret I kept until I found my salvation. Sharp nails. Pressure. Blood. The stinging pain made me forget, if only for a moment. Those moments of ignorance came with their own form of bliss and as the spiderweb of lines grew on my back I began telling myself I only did this for the love of it. I told myself that it was all for those short moments of serene ecstasy, nothing else. No other reason at all… </p><p>I stumble back and drop the razorblade. The memories I had long since forgotten, suppressed in the farthest reaches of my mind, wash over me like cold water. Caught in superposition my mind is blank all whilst racing at a million miles an hour. I sit down on the wet rug and rest my head in my hands. Questions are flying around my mind like a swarm of gnats; individually harmless but the huge cloud of them, clogging my brain, feels daunting and overwhelming. Was all my suffering for nothing? Were my years and years of pain for nothing? Is fighting really this futile? What did I do to deserve this? What could I possibly have done? Will it come back if I cut it out of me again? Did it ever really disappear? Has it always been a part of me? Has it always been a part of me? Has it-. No, I did get rid of it. Even if it was only for a while it’s only now, years later it has come back to haunt me. I gather my last bit of strength and slowly rise again, grabbing ahold of the sink for support. When I have steadied myself and feel I can stand on my own again I grab the razorblade and place it in the palm of my hand. I know I can’t live in constant fear of someone finding out, of my friends and family finding out. I must do something. Slowly I bring the razor blade to the face’s upper lip yet again. Could I live with the constant fear of the face’s eventual return? I won’t be able to forget this time. The thought makes me falter. Am I really willing to commit this ritualistic torture every few years? Will it be worth it in the end? Doubt snakes its way into my thoughts, and I don’t know what to believe anymore. I close my eyes, and when I open them again the razorblade which is still resting with its sharp edge on my back no longer seems like an instrument of pain and violence but it strikes me instead as a tender gesture; the shaving of another’s face. The father teaching the son or two lovers getting ready for their day. Maybe I can never be free and maybe it’s always been with me, within me, whatever the case I know it will never be truly gone. When I look at myself in the mirror nothing has changed except for the determination I can now see in my own eyes. Not fueled by violence or fear but by the promise of a life lived in peace. At last I turn away from the mirror, turn around and open the bathroom door.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I wrote this for a creative writing course and thought I'd publish it. Hope you enjoyed it!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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